It’s the final day of Desert Island Songs Week, and I was thinking this morning about my choices so far. All sane choices, if you ask me. Eight songs so far that I really would love to hear over and over again if I happened to be stranded on a desert island. (We so rarely seem to be stranded somewhere else.)

There’s been a certain strategy to my choices so far. At least three or four of the eight songs are long, which I think is important. After all, I’m going to have a lot of time on my hands, lying under a palm tree, waiting and hoping, waiting and hoping. You can’t have an endless run of really short songs; it doesn’t make sense.

But as I perused the list this morning, I thought to myself, “There isn’t one insane choice yet. And shouldn’t there be an insane choice?” Tough one. After all, I’m making these decisions before the stranding even happens. I’m able to prepare myself for this horrible situation, without the inevitable descent into sun-induced madness. (My god, am I going to burn. I am so Scottish!)

The list needs to reflect, at least in some small part, that inevitable descent into madness. And it just so happens that on the way to work this morning, when I dropped off the 10-year-old at school, my friend Lisa Hudson was doing traffic duty. And when I look at Lisa Hudson, I can think of only one thing. Several years ago, as some sort of sadistic party trick, we decided to sing a duet. It wasn’t Ebony and Ivory — a duet I used to sing with my Ethiopia-born hallmate in third-year university. (No joke. We were amazing. Though his voice sucked.) Anyway, it took two seconds for us to decide to entertain the party with our own passionate rendition of Endless Love — yes, Lionel Richie and Diana Ross, a song that Billboard — Billboard, people! — has named as the greatest love duet ever. Evah!

Now, I know you think I’m insane. That having the Barenaked Ladies make the cut was the first sign, and this is the latest. But remember, this pick reflects what will happen to me on that island. And when I’m lying on the beach in my underwear, seeing things that aren’t there, stroking my beard that’s down to my waist and yelling “Wilson!” constantly, that will be the most appropriate time for me to be both Lionel Richie and Diana Ross. I think you’re with me now.

Holy crappy video! Are they not lip-synching horribly? And how about that dress?

The sporting world mourns Nelson Mandela today, and he really was a great sportsman. Kudos to Chris Hewett of the Independent for an epic story of the Springboks and Nelson Mandela in 1995, a story told, frankly, not as well in the movie Invictus. This really is the best piece of writing I’ve ever read on the subject, with great detail and colour, transporting us back 18 years to a time when South Africa wasn’t even remotely a rugby powerhouse. And Mandela, among his many mandates, did something to try to change that.

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